Picturesque Allure

Maurice Ravel'sorchestral music -
heard byHOWARD SMITH

'... gently hypnotic ...'

Time was when musical pundits rated top orchestras with self conferred, unassailable authority. American candidates included the Boston and Chicago Symphony, the Philadephia, Cleveland and NYPO. Europe's gurus listed its Vienna Philharmonic, Concertgebouw, Berlin, Czech and Leningrad Phil, Bayerischen Rundfunks and one or more of London's orchestras. All such point scoring is thankfully a thing of the past...